


Terraforming

by neverwhyonlywho



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, SCIENCE!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-15
Updated: 2012-12-15
Packaged: 2017-11-21 04:36:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neverwhyonlywho/pseuds/neverwhyonlywho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has something special in mind for Rose's Christmas present. She's not so sure about this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terraforming

**Author's Note:**

> This was a response to the one-word prompt "Christmas."  
> Lots of botany references. Would love to know if these caused you to get hopelessly lost (or not!).  
> Will probably get a second chapter at some point.

“You’re planning something,” said Rose, and it was somewhere between a question and a statement.

“Me? Never. I would never do such a thing, Rose Tyler.” The Doctor peered purposefully at the console display, twisting knobs that didn’t normally need twisting and looking far more busy than he usually did. “Certainly nothing that would call for dressing warmly and meeting me back in the console room in half an hour. I’m hurt that you would think I could ever be up to something. Now you should absolutely not go get gloves, and you should definitely forget I ever said anything about boots.”

“Right, then.” She raised an eyebrow to him in challenge, feigning nonchalance. “I’ll be in the library, then. Since there’s nothing of that sort happening.”

That apparently wasn’t enough to break him. If she knew her Doctor, it took him a phenomenal amount of restraint to avoid gushing about their next planet—this must really be something.

But two could play at the Doctor’s game, so she turned around and started walking casually down the TARDIS corridor.

_Three…two…one…_

“And don’t forget a scarf!” he called out through gritted teeth. She grinned and set off for the wardrobe at a brisk walk that quickly broke into a run.

“Bloody woman,” she heard him grumble.

 ****

At first, she wasn’t entirely sure what all the fuss was about. The Doctor had been all smiles when she came back into the console room, but had—for once—been a man of few words. When he took her hand and led her out onto what looked to be little more than a barren muddy wasteland with a light dusting of snow, she began to wonder if this was a prank instead of a surprise.

“I was expecting snowball fights,” she admitted. “Bit cold for mud wrestling, don’t you think?”

“Oh, none of that.” She saw him grin, though, as he considered the possibility. “That’s an entirely different planet. Much warmer, that one. This, Rose Tyler—” he took her hand, “—is the planet Pyrusine in the year two billion and five. It is the planet’s first snow. The _very first_ one.”

There was that gleam in his eye: the triumph of discovery. Freedom and joy and the kind of conquest where nobody dies. If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looked like an unhinged biologist who’d just discovered an ark of new species. He squeezed her hand hard, gesturing down to their footprints.

“Rose, those are the first signs of life this planet has ever had.”

“Wait, you said the year…what, two billion? But…that’s really early, right?”

“Oh, very early. Earth is no more than a cosmic sneeze right now, all dust and debris floating about. Won’t aggregate into a proper planet for ages yet.”

“And we’re here now. Won’t that change things?”

“Doubtful. Even if a sentient species grows up out of these mud puddles, these footprints are on soft ground, and the winter on this planet is so mild, I wouldn’t expect anything to get frozen permanently. Nobody would find out. But! But. There’s more.” His grin got wider. “See, in the present—in your time—our time, that is—this is a barren planet. In the fossil record there were a few false starts at one kind of life or another, but they always kicked the bucket after a few million years because of an oxygen imbalance. Nothing to replace the oxygen they needed to breathe, so they all went kaput.”

“Yeah, okay, so why’ve you got that look on your face like you’re about to do something really clever?”

He rocked back on his heels with a grin, hands in the pockets of his coat. “Because,” he said nonchalantly, “we can fix it. If you want.”

“What do you mean, fix it?”

Instead of dignifying that with a reply, the Doctor fished about in his pocket for a second. When he withdrew his hand, he held it to her palm up: in it lay many large seeds, some resembling brown, luminous bulbs, some long and thin, some like corn kernels.

“These are…well, they’re primitive trees. Cycads, palms, conifers, things like that. There’s plenty of carbon dioxide in the air for them. It comes up naturally out of these mud flats. They’ll thrive on it. And they’ll grow, and give this world oxygen, and then…well, that’s when the magic happens.”

“But that’s changing history!”

“No no no, see, the reason plants were so successful on Earth was because most of them had this little beastie living in the soil with their roots. Diazotrophs, they’re called. Helps them fix nitrogen, which feeds the plants, and fwoop! They shoot up like…well, like sprouting plants, I suppose. But like I said, there’s no life on this planet right now. The plants will grow slower. There’s nothing to help them. If any life does evolve, it’ll be on its own terms. It just won’t sputter out for lack of air. I wouldn’t expect too much, really, Rose. I’m in it mostly for the trees.”

She took a pair of the seeds in hand, considering them. They felt durable, oddly heavy despite their small size. A handful of seeds—how would they change the universe? It was a lot to take in, and she frowned at the objects in her hand.

“This seems like a very strange Christmas trip, Doctor. This is great, and everything, and I have to say I’m really interested despite all your gardener mumbo jumbo, but…why?”

“Ah? Oh! No, this isn’t the Christmas trip. No wonder you were confused!” He popped one of the larger seeds into the air, catching it between his fingers with a grin. “This is the trip before the Christmas trip. This, Rose, is setting the stage. My plan, if you choose to accept it, is to seed this planet—ha, literally!—and then come back in, oh, a couple billion years. You want a winter wonderland?” His voice grew hushed now, reverent with possibility. “How about a forest covering a whole planet—snow everywhere, and it’s all just between us two and a _billion billion_ trees. Trees thousands of years old, with no one there to cut them down. Trees with root systems larger than cities. And all of that _glorious_ life because of us.”

“Can you promise we won’t create a race of man-eating trees by doing this?”

His grin got wider. “Nope!” He popped the ‘p,’ just for effect. “So what do you say, m’lady? Care to do a bit of gardening?”

Rose bit her lip, considering. This could be very good—or very bad.

“You said Time Lords weren’t meant to change things. That they were only supposed to watch.”

“Well, yeah,” he conceded, running a hand through his hair. “But I’m a _rubbish_ Time Lord! And it’s not like you need me to tell you that, either. You know it, Rose Tyler. So what do you think?”

She looked again at the seeds in her hand, and even now, the idea of billions of years was just so difficult to wrap her head around. There was so much that could go wrong—and so much that could go right. The Doctor had taken lives, in his own way. She knew he was still atoning for that, and wondered if this wasn’t his attempt to balance the scales a little.

Gently, her fist closed over the seeds, and she smiled up at his open, eager face.

“Where do I start?”


End file.
